Thursday, February 07, 2013

Cursed Be Both Their Houses

"We
woke up this morning to the sound of fierce battles. Every time there
are battles, we flee and have to decide where to go. Sometimes we stay
with relatives, sometimes with neighbours who fled before us."Damascus resident

"Most
of my neighbours have shut and gone home, and I'll shut too in a bit.
How can these people keep shelling, and how many people have they
killed? May God punish the oppressor."Waleed, Damascus merchant

"The
Battle of Armageddon" hasn't gone too well. Imaginatively named, but
undertaken by rebels who control the area east of the Damascus ring
road, without taking the trouble to ensure that other rebel groups
elsewhere in the city were in knowledge of what they were undertaking,
so that a co-ordinated effort, which would surely be more productively
efficient, could be undertaken.

It's difficult to
determine, really, whether that Damascus merchant, damning 'the
oppressor', meant the rebels or the regime. They have each become
damnable oppressors. In their zeal to outdo one another and survive to
dominate and conquer the other, the civilian population has become an
inchoate victim of violence, scattering in fear for their lives.

Rifle and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in hand, rebels collected in the north-western neighbourhood of Jobar,
in Damascus, to attack army checkpoints with heavy-calibre machine-guns
mounted on their pickup trucks. They are busily engaged in their own
live video production. In another video intense gunfire is heard as
local mosques broadcast "God is great", a battle cry.

Opposition
fighters are busy blasting army checkpoints with anti-aircraft guns.
The regime's forces are busy shelling the eastern and southern suburbs
to repel each new insurgent effort to impact the civil war into the very
heart of Syria's capital. The regime holds the centre of the capital;
the rebels have possession of the suburbs.